Classic movie site with rare images, original ads, and behind-the-scenes photos, with informative and insightful commentary. We like to have fun with movies!
Archive and Links
grbrpix@aol.com
Search Index Here




Saturday, August 25, 2012


Criterion's Broadway Bonus

The big noise for me on Criterion's Lonesome Blu-Ray was not the main attraction, but the Broadway extra that finally gives us access to a historic 1929 musical that Universal, by their account, sunk a million into. For decades, Broadway was thought to have survived only in battered silent prints, but here it is talking and singing to archaic rhythm that so endears many to clompety-clomp revues done when sound was evolving. All I knew about Broadway was what William K. Everson had written in Huff Society notes and his Citadel book, The Detective In Film (it's since been covered admirably by Richard Barrios in definitive A Song In The Dark, his study of early musicals).


Broadway is crime-thrilling in addition to music-making, so pudding is thick and varied. You could say it was a picture with everything, opening in crazy quilt '29 when all-singing-dancing rivals were elbowing each other on and off White Way screens, too many in fact for even an eager public to absorb. Any big picture was a gamble for Universal, their engine run primarily on serials, westerns, action what-nots. To drop a million, or whatever it actually cost, the company would sweat from there to hopeful recovery of investment.


Newspaper Ad for The Original Stage Play of Broadway
The meter had run from purchase of the stage property by Philip Dunning and George Abbot. Universal publicity said the play took place entirely on one set, with night club happenings only referred to by characters. If true, this must have been murder to sit through. From taking screen initiative, U put chief imagineer Dr. Paul Fejos (a real doctor, or researcher, or something) to design and directing. He conjured a night club set to dazzle senses and be a largest such in the short history of talkies so far. Seventy feet high and 340 feet long seems enough to house a dozen working crews. Uni cowboys Hoot, Ken, and big-hat Tom Mix could have done whole seasons with money pumped in here. Broadway's camera captured it all with assist of a tallest ever crane that swooped like Rodan amongst actors it closed in upon.


"Cubistic shapes" dominated. There were twenty box seats with tables up and down walls continually assaulted by the roving camera. Many will say the crane and massive set it traversed was the whole show and sole point of modern interest, but Broadway's story and dialogue, admittedly languid at times, capture Prohibition flavor and high-life as lived just ahead of the Crash. There's enough slang here to generate a dictionary. Talk, dress, and manner among characters would have been stylized even then. Fast-pace New Yorkers really were a different breed of cat, especially to rurals who never experienced so much as a stop signal, and it was this fascination that allowed shows like Broadway to flourish.


Precode moralities are observed. A murder is committed and police excuse it. The cast isn't special to us, but patrons then knew Glenn Tryon from years doing comedy, and Merna Kennedy had been Chaplin's lead lady in The Circus. Evelyn Brent was surest bet for recognition, having come off similar-in-ways Underworld of a couple seasons back. Others in the cast were repeating stage roles, so were sure-footed (the play had sold tickets for nearly two years, plus more on the road). Gangster element is thick, though none claim individual notice as a later Robinson or Cagney would.

Broadway Premieres at Broadway's Globe Theatre

How Universal bally'ed Broadway at its own Broadway open is at least as interesting as the movie we're left with. Modern was a byword and selling focus. The Globe Theatre's lobby was jiggered to a deco polish. You could stand entranced by displays for as long as it took the show inside to unspool. Radio announcers were said to be working entrance areas for a first time in New York. Can't confirm truth of that claim, but Broadway had to be at vanguard of tying a premiere to live broadcast. You could buy piano rolls for "mechanical" keyboards, but also records on 78 RPM that pointed in a future's direction. Unique too was a sold at five-and-dimes "Movie Box"  you'd peek into and turn a crank for flip-viewing of Broadway highlights. It was a cardboard novelty that Universal promised kids would "go wild" for.



Hitting hard at Gotham/Globe open gave Universal impetus to sell Broadway at highest terms for subsequent play, but though it lured multitudes off the street being celebrated, that didn't mean Podunk patronage would similarly respond. You could argue then that Broadway was done as much for prestige and urban recognition as dollars. Certainly it was pictures like this, Showboat, and upcoming All Quiet On The Western Front that made Universal a company to reckon with. Of relics surviving from transitional Hollywood (and Universal), Broadway stands tall as its fabled club set. Visual pay-off alone is breath-taking. Was there anything so audacious in formative years of screen talk? Criterion tenders what is surely best-extant quality. This one plus Lonesome on a same Blu-Ray ticket amounts to the bargain of a so-far summer.

5 Comments:

Anonymous mido505 said...

Credit must go to the great Hal Mohr, who designed the crane that enabled Fejos to get the most out of his magnificent set. Beginning in the silent years photographing for such demanding patrons as Mary Pickford (Sparrows), Michael Curtiz (Noah's Ark), and Paul Leni (The Last Warning), Mohr helmed several key transitional sound films (The Jazz Singer, Broadway), that demonstrated that visual inventiveness would not fall victim to the tyrannous microphone. Mohr went on to win an Academy Award (on a write in vote!) for his staggering work on A Midsummer Night's Dream; and another for the rich Technicolor photography of The Phantom of the Opera (1943). Mohr continued to do masterful, innovative work right into the 60's (The Wild One, Underworld U.S.A.), and finished up on Andy Warhol's favorite picture, Creation of the Humanoids.

6:23 PM  
Blogger Samuel Wilson said...

Don't forget that Fejos's The Last Performance is part of that package as well, which should put it over the top as Disc of the Season.

11:57 PM  
Anonymous Dbenson said...

Saw the place in a college production years ago. The single set was a backstage room at a nightclub, where chorus girls would line up just before hopping onstage and gangsters, stage door johnnies and cops seemed to congregate. It was entertaining, with enough wise guy comedy that they didn't have to camp it up.

Remembered line: A comic henchman explains his attraction to the club's formidable torch singer. "Give me a girl who can sit in a morris chair and fill it!"

2:20 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The star of the original production of Broadway was Lee Tracy - which led to his starring in The Front Page.

Tracy's understudy was a young and inexperienced Jimmy Cagney

StevenT

9:39 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

What could have been? If Lee Tracy had the lead in BROADWAY it would have been a vastly better film!

Glenn Tryon is just not likeable and Merna Kennedy is also unattractively clueless! And the police inspector---if he talked any slower he'd be a great cure for insomnia!

When I ran this film on the big screen, I was thinking "Where is Busby Berkeley when you need him?"
Despite the over done and over the top set and tiring crane shots framing ant-sized performers, totally amateurish production numbers or panning WAY too fast in several shots, there is a very slight charm in BROADWAY. Where else can you see a sober Arthur Houseman??? (answer: NIGHT LIFE IN RENO (1931)

The Paradise Night Club has to be the most UN-intimate space ever conceived as a showplace. Imagine what their heating and a/c bills must have been with a 60 foot ceiling?

There are many better art deco films---sorry to say BROADWAY isn't even in the top 20.

Lyric Photoplay Society
Toledo, Ohio

11:29 AM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

grbrpix@aol.com
  • December 2005
  • January 2006
  • February 2006
  • March 2006
  • April 2006
  • May 2006
  • June 2006
  • July 2006
  • August 2006
  • September 2006
  • October 2006
  • November 2006
  • December 2006
  • January 2007
  • February 2007
  • March 2007
  • April 2007
  • May 2007
  • June 2007
  • July 2007
  • August 2007
  • September 2007
  • October 2007
  • November 2007
  • December 2007
  • January 2008
  • February 2008
  • March 2008
  • April 2008
  • May 2008
  • June 2008
  • July 2008
  • August 2008
  • September 2008
  • October 2008
  • November 2008
  • December 2008
  • January 2009
  • February 2009
  • March 2009
  • April 2009
  • May 2009
  • June 2009
  • July 2009
  • August 2009
  • September 2009
  • October 2009
  • November 2009
  • December 2009
  • January 2010
  • February 2010
  • March 2010
  • April 2010
  • May 2010
  • June 2010
  • July 2010
  • August 2010
  • September 2010
  • October 2010
  • November 2010
  • December 2010
  • January 2011
  • February 2011
  • March 2011
  • April 2011
  • May 2011
  • June 2011
  • July 2011
  • August 2011
  • September 2011
  • October 2011
  • November 2011
  • December 2011
  • January 2012
  • February 2012
  • March 2012
  • April 2012
  • May 2012
  • June 2012
  • July 2012
  • August 2012
  • September 2012
  • October 2012
  • November 2012
  • December 2012
  • January 2013
  • February 2013
  • March 2013
  • April 2013
  • May 2013
  • June 2013
  • July 2013
  • August 2013
  • September 2013
  • October 2013
  • November 2013
  • December 2013
  • January 2014
  • February 2014
  • March 2014
  • April 2014
  • May 2014
  • June 2014
  • July 2014
  • August 2014
  • September 2014
  • October 2014
  • November 2014
  • December 2014
  • January 2015
  • February 2015
  • March 2015
  • April 2015
  • May 2015
  • June 2015
  • July 2015
  • August 2015
  • September 2015
  • October 2015
  • November 2015
  • December 2015
  • January 2016
  • February 2016
  • March 2016
  • April 2016
  • May 2016
  • June 2016
  • July 2016
  • August 2016
  • September 2016
  • October 2016
  • November 2016
  • December 2016
  • January 2017
  • February 2017
  • March 2017
  • April 2017
  • May 2017
  • June 2017
  • July 2017
  • August 2017
  • September 2017
  • October 2017
  • November 2017
  • December 2017
  • January 2018
  • February 2018
  • March 2018
  • April 2018
  • May 2018
  • June 2018
  • July 2018
  • August 2018
  • September 2018
  • October 2018
  • November 2018
  • December 2018
  • January 2019
  • February 2019
  • March 2019
  • April 2019
  • May 2019
  • June 2019
  • July 2019
  • August 2019
  • September 2019
  • October 2019
  • November 2019
  • December 2019
  • January 2020
  • February 2020
  • March 2020
  • April 2020
  • May 2020
  • June 2020
  • July 2020
  • August 2020
  • September 2020
  • October 2020
  • November 2020
  • December 2020
  • January 2021
  • February 2021
  • March 2021
  • April 2021
  • May 2021
  • June 2021
  • July 2021
  • August 2021
  • September 2021
  • October 2021
  • November 2021
  • December 2021
  • January 2022
  • February 2022
  • March 2022
  • April 2022
  • May 2022
  • June 2022
  • July 2022
  • August 2022
  • September 2022
  • October 2022
  • November 2022
  • December 2022
  • January 2023
  • February 2023
  • March 2023
  • April 2023
  • May 2023
  • June 2023
  • July 2023
  • August 2023
  • September 2023
  • October 2023
  • November 2023
  • December 2023
  • January 2024
  • February 2024
  • March 2024